| When it comes to traffic, there are two proven ways | | | | 3. You eliminate one less hurdle for the visitor to go |
| to get targeted and interested buyers to flood to your | | | | through before making a purchase |
| websites or affiliate offers. That is organic (search | | | | Whilst all of these benefits seem pretty conclusive, the |
| engines, writing articles etc) and paid traffic (Pay per | | | | truth is that there is actually a greater effectiveness of |
| click being the most effective). | | | | using your own landing pages to pre-sell the visitor on |
| Whilst both methods are capable of bringing in huge | | | | the affiliate product that you are promoting, such as: |
| amounts of targeted traffic that are ready to buy | | | | 1. You can warm the visitor up and prepare them for |
| from you, the paid option has certain benefits over | | | | the sales pitch |
| organic search engine listings. | | | | 2. You can tell your story and make the visitor connect |
| First of all, paid traffic is able to bring in traffic in | | | | with you emotionally, which rockets conversions! |
| lightening fast time as opposed to organic traffic. Whilst | | | | 3. You can get the opportunity to capture an email |
| organic traffic from the search engines might save | | | | address so that you can send out multiple offers to |
| you money over time, it's also important to realize that | | | | the same person (all for the same product if they don't |
| time is also money! | | | | buy straight away). |
| So why do a lot of struggling marketers still shy away | | | | Another problem with directly linking to affiliate offers is |
| from paid advertising such as Google Adwords? Is it | | | | that Google Adwords will often penalize you for doing |
| because it doesn't work? Well, maybe it didn't work for | | | | so, if other advertisers are also doing this on the same |
| them personally but it sure does work for millions of | | | | keywords that you're bidding on. Google doesn't want |
| other marketers. So the real question is how to make | | | | a ton of duplicate ads for a keyword, so you need to |
| it work for YOU. | | | | be unique. |
| If you are promoting affiliate offers then the first thing | | | | Ultimately, tests have proven that sending people to a |
| to consider is whether you will be able to link directly to | | | | pre-sell landing page that either contains a personal |
| the merchant's website using your affiliate link in the | | | | recommendation, a review or a chance to capture |
| PPC ad, or if you would be better off sending your | | | | people's email addresses is likely to rocket your |
| traffic to a landing page hosted on your own domain | | | | conversion ratios beyond belief. |
| (or on a free domain elsewhere if you don't own a | | | | And in the lucrative but competitive world of PPC |
| domain yet). | | | | advertising, where every click cuts into your profits, |
| This is a common hurdle for affiliates and there are | | | | then a higher conversion ratio is your ultimate goal. |
| pros and cons to each method. Let's look at why | | | | Google rotates ads that point to the same display |
| you'd want to link directly to the merchant's website | | | | URL. If you and 99 other folks are advertising a |
| instead of using a landing page on your own site: | | | | specific affiliate product, and are all using direct link, you |
| 1. You can quickly throw up an entire campaign and | | | | dilute the number of times your ad will be seen. Google |
| test the water with a product | | | | will only return one ad per display URL when a search |
| 2. You don't need to worry about writing sales copy or | | | | is performed. |
| actually creating web pages | | | | |